Remember how Mark Shuttleworth justified moving the window titlebar widgets to the left by claiming the space freed up on the right side could now be used for something else? On his blog, Shuttleworth unveiled what, exactly, Ubuntu's plans are: window indicators, or 'windicators'. In a nutshell, it comes down to having a tray area in every window.

My justification for recommending Ubuntu has always hinged on Shuttleworth having his head screwed on right. What happened? Now I look like an idiot.

If you were to buy a second car, would you settle for one where the pedals were in different order from your other car? Me neither. I wouldn't want that on my multiple PCs and operating systems either.

Us visually challenged have come to rely on button/icon positioning rather than trying to figure out it's colors. Mark, you've just sent us back to 1984 in our learning curve.

I don't know really what the motivation is here. Just because you CAN do something, seldom dictates that you HAVE to do it. Stick with the standard layout, please. Add the icon barrage in a floating toolbar if you have to have them. Just make sure that we can also hide it.

I spend my time convincing people to move from Windows to Ubuntu. Why create more obstacles and sources of confusion for the masses that are already scared of Linux because of clearly perceived differences in its interaction with the user?

Calling for return to sanity. You all know how easy it is to jump from one distro to another nowadays. Canonical should know it too. There is a point where pain of managing the nonstandard UI controls exceeds any perceived pain from switching to a different distro. That is the point where you will start losing fans, Mark.